the supreme ridicule that would have fallen on the French Emperor if he encouraged the Austrians to return to Central Italy after driving them out of Lombardy, have obliged him to support the principle of non-intervention, whether he wished it or not?  England was prepared to back up the government of Piedmont, in which lay a great moral force.  It is plain that the long wavering about what ought to be done with the central provinces is what cost the country Savoy and Nice, or at any rate, Nice.  Napoleon did all in his power to prevent and to retard the annexations, especially that of Tuscany, which, as he said, ’would make Italian unity a mere question of time,’ but when he found that neither threats nor blandishments could move the population from their resolve to have Victor Emmanuel for their king, he decided to sell his adhesion for a good price.  Compelled for the sake of appearances to withdraw his claim after the abrupt termination of the war, he now saw an excellent excuse for reviving it, and he was not likely to let the opportunity slip.

At this period there was continual talk, which may or may not have been intended to end in talk, of a Congress to which the affairs of Italy were to be referred.  It gave an opening to Napoleon for publishing one of the anonymous pamphlets by means of which he was in the habit of throwing out tentative ideas, and watching their effect.  The chief idea broached in Le Pape et le Congres was the voluntary renunciation by the Pope of all but a small zone of territory round Rome; it being pointed out that his position as an independent sovereign would remain unaffected by such an act, which would smooth the way to his assuming the hegemony of the Italian Confederation.  The Pope, however, let it be clearly known that he had no intention of ceding a rood of his possessions, or of recognising the separation of the part which had already escaped from him.  Anyone acquainted with the long strife and millennial manoeuvres by which the Church had acquired the States called by her name, will understand the unwillingness there was to yield them.  To do Pius IX. justice, an objection which merits more respect weighed then and always upon his mind.  He thought that he was personally debarred by the oath taken on assuming the tiara from giving up the smallest part of the territory he received from his predecessor.  The Ultramontane party knew that they had only to remind him of this oath to provoke a fresh assertion of Non possumus. The attitude of the Pope was one reason why the Congress was abandoned; but there was a deeper reason.  A European Congress would certainly not have approved the cession of Nice and Savoy, and to that object the French Emperor was now turning all his attention.

At Turin there was an ignoble cabal, supported not so much, perhaps, by Rattazzi himself as by followers, the design of which was to prevent Cavour from returning to power.  Abroad, the Empress Eugenie, who looked on Cavour as the Pope’s worst foe, did what she could to further the scheme, and its promoters counted much on the soreness left in Victor Emmanuel’s mind by the scene after Villafranca.  That soreness did, in fact, still exist; but when in January the Rattazzi ministry fell, the King saw that it was his duty to recall Cavour to his counsels, and he at once charged him to form a cabinet.